


We found family in a hopeless place

by Cuits



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 23:55:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11932005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuits/pseuds/Cuits
Summary: Matt dissapears under the collapsed building of Midland Circle and for a while everyone thinks he is dead.Claire dates Luke, and for a while, everyone thinks they are going to last.They all go their different ways, and of a while, nobody thinks that they will find a family in this group of strangers.





	We found family in a hopeless place

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of things to do, like importan real-life things to do. 
> 
> ::sighs::
> 
> As per usual my perpetual gratitude to @dasku that mkes sense of the things I put into words.

In the long run, Claire suspects things won’t work out with Luke.

It’s like they both have too much baggage and not enough all at the same time, or maybe it’s just that their common ground is constantly shattered by the grenades that this city insists on throwing upon them.

It doesn’t matter.

Claire sits on the window sill leads to the fire escape stairs and stares at the familiar landscape of the city at night. The sirens and street noises are almost comforting as she braces herself, her eyes full of unshed tears and she tries to keep her sadness at bay.

They have been pulling the remainders of the collapsed building out of that big hole in Manhattan for four days now. She knows the odds of finding Matt alive under the rubble better than most, but she still looks around her as she walks the streets after the sun has set hoping to find him battered but alive, hiding at the nearest dark alley.

Luke comes from behind her and embraces her. The skin of his arms is incredibly soft against her own skin. It doesn’t have scars, scratches or sores, like baby skin. Claire leans back. His presence is solid, real and imposing and she craves all of those things now.

“It’s going to be okay,” he says in a low voice near her ear, but oddly it doesn't comfort her. She supposes she knows better by now.

 

Foggy comes again by her place. Matt has been missing for six days now and the dark circles under his eyes tell her that he has slept little if at all in that period of time.

“I filled a missing person report for Matt yesterday,” he says. His hands lay unmoving on the table and he sounds exactly as exhausted as he looks.

“When was the last time that you slept? I think I have something around that could help you with that.”

Foggy doesn’t seem to hear her or at least he doesn’t listen. “If they find him down there… he was wearing the suit.”

Claire breaths deeply at the chosen conditional, like his possible misplaced hope gives her room to breathe.

Foggy shrugs. “I know it’s silly but I wouldn’t want for his legacy to be a bunch of glossy covers and a reviewing of all his cases.”

She takes one of his hands over the table and squeezes, as if in that moment, Foggy was the only thing keeping her from falling.

“We will take care of that when the time comes,” Luke says, but Claire still doesn't find any comfort in his words.

Foggy nods and squeezes her hand back before heading out, his eyes red and the saddest stance she has ever seen.

 

On day ten, the city seems to have forgotten about the latest Manhattan incident but the double digits are like a kick on the solar plexus for her. She goes out to buy some groceries but ends up gravitating towards Matt’s apartment instead. She had almost forgotten about the key that she demanded a long, long time ago in case of an emergency.

She is not sure she knows what constitutes an emergency any more but she is pretty sure that running out of milk for Luke’s breakfast cereals is not one, nevertheless she finds the key conspicuously hidden in her keychain between her box mail key and the space needle charm her neighbour brought her from Seattle, and lets herself in.

The apartment looks mostly as she remembers it, a little messy around the edges in what otherwise would be a pathological neatness, and everywhere she looks there are a million little things that remind her of the life choices she has made in the last couple of years. It smells like Matt and she breathes deeply. It feels stale and she cries, sobbing loudly for half an hour before she heads back to the grocery store.

 

Foggy meets her for a late coffee on the two weeks mark.

“I miss him,” he says looking at the ground between his feet and Claire can’t say that she misses him too because she can’t compare their losses. He is his best friend since forever and she made the choice to back off.

She sniffs and lets herself sink in the park bench. She doesn’t know what to say so she doesn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry. I know I’m imposing on you but Karen seems to be too busy these days and there’s no one else who really knew him.”

“Hey, hey,” she says half hugging him with the arm that is not holding a coffee cup. “It’s okay. You are not imposing.”

“He talked about you sometimes, you know? Mostly when I inquired about his insurance coverage,” he half jokes.

“Well, let me tell you this, no insurance company could have profited from covering Matt Murdock, that’s for sure.”

They both laugh but it sounds a little fake and entirely too desperate and they both fall silent for a couple of minutes.

“I… I urged him to leave that other life because I was terrified of something like this happening,” Foggy confesses, “but I could feel him slipping away anyway. I think — I think I would have ended up losing him either way.”

Claire can relate because that’s what she saw two and a half years ago. Back then she could easily see herself falling in love with him and Matt dying tragically, heroically way too soon.

Boy. Oh boy.

“He literally can’t stay away from injustice. He’s like deadly allergic to inaction. It’s what makes him, him.”

Neither comment on her using the present tense.

When she makes it back to the apartment Luke is nowhere to be seen. He hasn’t got a job yet but he is out on the street an awful lot. It worries her, his lack of interest in earning a stable salary that pays the bills. She figures it would be hard to be Harlem saviour without heating or running water, not to mention the insane amount of his shirts that get discarded due to bullet holes.

She worries about his lack of pragmatism, of planning ahead but she doesn’t say anything because she hasn’t found the words yet that wouldn’t offend at least one of them once said.

 

 

Karen comes to the apartment on day twenty, and she doesn’t come alone. A guy that looks like a boxer leans on her slender shoulders with what seems to be a bullet wound on his left side and she ushers them inside.

“I’m sorry. I know we don’t really know each other but I didn’t know where else to go and Foggy once told me—”

“Do you have any other wounds?” she asks the guy interrupting her as she quickly gathers supplies. Explanations are for times with less bleeding.

“No.” He is pressing the wound with his own free hand. “No cops.”

Claire rolls her eyes. Those seem to be the first two words of every new stranger that crosses her doorstep. She really should start paying attention to the company she keeps because now that the guy is in his sitting room, she thinks she can recognize his face from some avenging gone wrong shit that came on the TV last fall.

Claire takes a look at the soaked shirt and doesn’t think twice. She doesn’t really know Karen but Matt trusted her so she is going to trust the girl too, and her poor life choices, apparently .

“Okay, you seem to be in a lot of pain but I’ve run out of anesthetics due to assholes like you showing here with bullet holes, so this is going to really, really hurt.”

“Oh God,” she hears Karen say as they both help they guy lean on the couch.

“I can take pain.”

She rolls her eyes and puts her gloves on, she conveniently decides to ignore how shaken Karen seems to be because she has no time and the girl is going to have to help her.

“We’ll see about that. Okay, Big Boy, what’s your name?”

The guy hisses and looks at her like she has just asked him to kick a puppy.

“I’m the Punisher.”

“Seriously? Punisher? it sounds like the title of a low budget porn movie from the seventies.” She empties half a bottle of antiseptic over his side and grabs the materials. “Hold him as steady as you can,” she says to Karen.

“These people and their names,” she murmurs as she tries to find the bullet while he grunts. “You all should hire a marketing agent or something.”

Matt would have smiled at her then, or at least snort, pain would be damned, but this guy just keep his hands in fists and his expression as guarded as possible. Claire ventures a quick look at Karen. The girl looks sad, a little lost and completely scared shitless.

Not for the first time since that building collapses she thinks that things are not like they are supposed to be.

 

They all go to Josie’s and get as wasted as they can afford the day the City Council announces that the works on the ruins of the Midland Circle are officially over. Danny, Colleen, Jessica, Trish, Karen, Foggy, Luke and herself. They are an odd group of drunks that don’t quite know what it is that they are mourning.

Foggy keeps coming to the table where Luke, Danny and herself are slumped to do shots in Matt’s honor and the place is starting to spin around her when Luke leans to whisper. 

“I’m really sorry for him,” he says with obvious, condescending sadness in his voice. “He keeps coming to the apartment, to us, but the truth is that we can offer little comfort. Matt seemed like a great guy but we only knew him for like a week.”

It sobers her up in an instant as Danny says some profound shit about chi, or karma or whatever. That is the moment when Claire realizes that Luke and her are never going to work out in the long run, because she hadn’t realized that she had kept that kind of things from him but more importantly because she doesn’t want to share them with him.

It is childish, irrational and probably a little selfish but she can’t let go of the memories of Matt, it’s the only thing that remains of him now and sharing the moments that they spent together feels like diminishing how important they were for her, somehow.

No, she can’t do it. Not even for Luke.

 

Matthew Murdock appears from out of nowhere twenty eight days after having disappeared. 

_Hey, Claire, It’s Maddy from Metro-General. Remember that picture that you gave us like a month ago in case he appeared down here? Well, he just walked in the emergency room with some minor lacerations and maybe a head trauma. You owe us a beer, girl._

She listen to her voicemail and then calls Luke to say something and then she calls Foggy to also say something but Foggy seems to be already on his way because apparently he is listed as Matt’s emergency contact and then she cries for like ten minutes straight and then she heads for the hospital telling herself that it could all be still a misunderstanding until she arrives there.

She asks for a favor and is allowed to go in with Foggy to speak to the doctor even though she’s not his next of kin. She holds Foggy’s hand as she makes a fist with her other hand, her nails digging into the skin of her palm and her knuckles white with tension.

“He appears to be in good health overall, just some minor cuts and lacerations that are already half-healed but he presents symptoms of an almost healed, severus head trauma and possible deep mental trauma.”

Foggy nods frantically, more like he is about to explode from tension and less like he is fully understanding what the doctor is saying at all.

“Can we see him?” asks Claire with a confidence she is definitely faking. She feels like she has aged two decades in the last two minutes.

“We are moving him to a private room right now and we’d like for him to be in observation for at least forty eight hours. You can see him as soon as he is settled but I must warn you that the patient seems has retrograde amnesia although at the moment we can’t be sure if it’s due to neurological causes or psychological factors.”

Both Claire and Foggy let out the air in their lungs with a loud wheeze and the doctor takes that as his cue to leave.

“Maybe you should go ahead alone,” Claire says, crossing her arms over her stomach that feels suddenly empty. “It is far more possible that he might remember you rather than me.”

“I don’t think I can go alone.” Foggy’s voice breaks in a million pieces.

She nods and they begin to walk the hallway towards the room that the nurse at the station indicates. 

Claire is not sure what she expected to find in that hospital bed but it is not what she sees, which paradoxically is exactly what the hospital personnel had told them to expect: Matt. In some jeans and a nondescript gray t-shirt.

He looks a little bit thinner than the last time they saw him, fading bruises color the skin of his arms and neck as paint splashes and a long scratch crosses his right cheek. His hair is longer.

He is far from being at the verge of death, far from any state that would have prevented him from coming home sooner.

“Matt?” Foggy doesn’t step further into the room as if afraid of breaking the spell and they both stand a step away from the door.

Matt turns his head sharply towards them as if startled. “Who’s there?”

“It’s… It’s Foggy,” he says, a hopeless tone in every syllable that comes out of his mouth. “And Claire.”

Matt gets up from the bed and Claire watches his muscles flex as he moves to incorporate without any trace of pain or stiffness. He takes a couple of tentative steps, his arms extended before him. On his third step he hits a chair with his leg and winces.

“Do you remember us, Matt?”

Claire looks behind her. The door is open and there are a couple of nurses and a doctor talking in a circle not far from them.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

Claire takes Foggy’s arm and yanks it. “We should go,” she says, her heart races, her own heartbeat loud in her ears. “Let the doctors run their tests and come back later.”

“But—”

She yanks harder. “We’ll come back later, Foggy.”

They are already halfway down the hallway when she murmurs, “rooftop, in half an hour,” so low that only someone with a freakly acute sense of hearing could perceive from afar.

 

She leaves Foggy in the waiting room, hugging Karen and trying to make sense of what the doctor had said to them and goes to borrow a couple of cigarettes from old colleagues before heading for the stairs.

The sky is dark and polluted so it’s hard to see any stars but she tries anyway as she braces herself. It has always been a little bit windy in this rooftop. She checks her watch and wonders if she might be wrong but retrograde amnesia doesn’t mess with procedural memory and Matt — he once told her that he gathered his abilities as a child, he should have never hit that chair unless he was putting up an act or something really, _really_ bad and disturbing had happened to him

“I don’t smoke,” she hears him say. She hadn’t heard the door opening.

Claire looks at her hand, the one holding the two cigarettes that she thought could make a good excuse in anyone were to find them here and smiles with some relief and a lot anger.

“You are such an _asshole_.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. One could argue in his favor that he really seems to be sorry but it doesn’t placate her. His absence has hurt her too much to be contained in a couple of words.

“Such an asshole!”

She needs the full account of what has happened in the last twenty eight days, but maybe that can wait for another thirty seconds. She takes a couple of long steps and hugs him hard, the cigarettes breaking in her hand.

“I’m really mad at you,” she says against his chest. She embraces him harder and breathes him in. Matt is solid and real between her arms.

“I know.” 

He hugs her back and caresses the side of her face with his thumb.

 

In the days to come Matt explains to them that he woke up in a convent days after the incident and that he decided not to come until making sure that he was the only one that made it out of the big hole. The ruse about the amnesia was a necessary evil not to raise too many questions and keep Matthew Murdock and Daredevil as far apart as possible.

“For a blind guy without invincibility or super strength you are one lucky jerk,” Jessica asserts before doing a shot, and then Danny starts to talk about chi things again and pretty much everyone joins Jessica in her liquid diet frenzy.

 

Another guy falls into her dumpster. Deaf, handsome, carrying a bow around. A complete human disaster. She stitches him up and lets him use her shower.

“I owe you one, Claire Temple, “ he says as a way of goodbye, saluting with his bow which makes him wince.

“I never told you my last name.”

“Word gets around,” he says with a shrug, which pretty much explains nothing at all, but she wonders if she has finally managed to make it in the secret yellow pages of vigilantes.

Otherwise, there is a relatively calm in the city that makes everybody nervous and uneasy so when he knock on her door she jumps out of her skin for no reason at all.

Claire opens the door and Matt is there, with a little apologetic smile and a cup of coffee like a peace offering.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She shrugs it off and invites him in. Luke isn’t home, he rarely is these days although he keeps on having no official job or stable income.

“I have a client down your hall,” he explains as he sits carefully on the couch.

“You don’t need an excuse to come to say hi.”

“Don’t I?” He sounds a little aggravated although Claire has no idea why. “I remember you saying that you were okay with patching me up but otherwise—”

Claire doesn’t let him finish. “That was two or three almost city-apocalypses ago. Things have changed.”

Matt nods and smiles with relief and easy charm but there is something heavy in his stance.

“What happened is not your fault,” she says taking his hand because she suspects he needs to hear the words.

“I could have stopped her sooner. Misty—”

“Misty is okay,” she inhales, stops and starts again. “Misty is not okay but she will be fine, and you could never have stopped Elektra without giving her the benefit of the doubt first. It’s not who you are, Matt.”

“Who I am seems to drive away the people I care for.”

“That is not true.”

Except yeah, she did run away from him before she could end up in love with him and worried sick every time he hit the streets. There is a vulnerability in Matt that speaks to something deep within herself and before she thinks about it, she combs the hair that falls upon his forehead with her fingers and leans to rest her head on his shoulder. 

Matt puts his hand over her shoulder and caresses lightly the skin that doesn’t cover her tank top with his thumb. They stay like that in the silence until her coffee runs cold and the natural light of the room starts to dim.

“You are good at this,” he says finally, when was just starting to close her eyes.

“At what?”

“Fixing people,” he says, “fixing me.”

 

Three months pass by and the strain of Luke’s lack of financial commitment to their relationship starts to take a toll on her. It’s not like she is asking for much, just the tiniest signal that they want the same things, that they aim for a normal future together as much as their singularities would allow them, but it never comes. She has known for a while that it will never come.

“You always knew that helping people, helping this community was my priority, Claire.”

“I’m not saying that you should stop altogether and get a job at a bank, but it would be nice to have a little extra money at the end of the month after paying the bills, or have a date night out without it ending giving statements to the police.”

Luke looks at her like this is brand new information that comes out of nowhere and they both decide that maybe it would be better if they took a break from each other. A breathing break, not a Ross Geller kind of break.

 

Colleen calls her a couple of weeks after that, her voice frantic with worry because she hasn't heard from Danny in the last thirty-six hours.

“Have you asked _the guys_?” 

_The guys_ is the non descriptive name that they all have come to use to describe the strange group of acquaintances they have formed. _Manhattan superheroes and sidekicks_ was way too obvious.

“Trish hasn’t heard anything, Jessica never answers her fucking phone, Matt has been in court all day, Luke seems to be _busy_ with his fists as he hung up on me and Karen says she would ask her guy.”

Gods, some days she can’t quite believe the mess she has managed to make of her life.

“Okay, calm down Colleen, I’m sure everything is fine.”

“It’s easy for you to say, your boyfriend’s skin can stop bullets.”

There is a silence on the line. Claire takes a deep slow breath.

“I’m sorry, that was mean,” the other girl says with an almost trembling voice. “I’m just really worried.”

Danny comes home a couple hours later, battered but alive as Colleen informs her by text but her words still linger in her mind, playing themselves over and over again against the corners of her mind. She can’t help ask herself if she would have started something with Luke if his skin wasn’t such a good armor, or worse yet, if she would have distanced herself from Matt three and a half years ago if his skin was unbreakable like Luke’s.

She doesn’t like any of the answers that come to her brain so she calls Luke and sets a date to talk. They both decide that it feels better not to resume their romantic relationship, and they both seem to feel more relieved than they should.

 

It feels like it takes forever but things, and people and places start to fall in place. Since the Hand disintegrated under a Manhattan building Claire had become employable again so she took a part time job at Metro-General and has unofficially become the medical aid that helps Misty get used to her new bionic arm and the go-to-girl for wounded vigilantes and uninsured neighbors. Her dumpster becomes semi-regularly populated.

“Luke and I are going to open a business,” Danny announces over warm take-out as almost all _the guys_ take dinner in the dojo after a complicated affair with some traficants. “ _Heroes for hire_ ,” he says proudly.

Claire groans and rolls her eyes and Trish just frowns like she had heard some really untuned note.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jessica asks affronted.

“It’s self-explanatory!” defends Danny

“ _The Firefly and The Walking Brownstone_ is also self-explanatory but at least is not an alliteration.” She takes a long swing of her beer. “Jesus!”

“I think it’s catchy,” Matt says with a little smile that always means trouble and Claire slaps him lightly on his sprawled leg.

“Don’t encourage them.”

He laughs at her and she smiles at him. She doesn’t know how to move them past this strange, friendly almost-something they seem to be trapped in. It is killing her and her stomach, one half a pint of ice-cream at a time.

 

The next wednesday Matt calls to ask her if she would like to go to a classical music concert in Central Park with him. She doesn’t even try to fake some hesitation.

They spread out a picnic blanket and listen to music. Claire wears a sundress and Matt holds her hand all the way home without stopping to interrupt any ongoing crime. When they stop at the door of her building she feels like she is fifteen, nineteen, twenty-one again.

“So, Matt Murdock does really have a life outside Hell’s Kitchen,” she says flirty as she plays with the unbuttoned neck of his shirt.”

“Don’t tell anyone, it’s a secret,” he whispers back, and then he leans towards her. Claire closes her eyes as their lips meet, his hand calloused and warm caressing the side of her throat as his mouth moves lazily slowly over hers. 

The eco of a distant gunshot breaks them apart with a start and Matt remains very, very still for a couple of seconds.

“Do you have to go?” she asks, waiting for the unavoidable answer, but instead Matt smiles.

“No, Jessica’s got him.”

His smile spreads and Claire guesses he can hear Jessica’s colourful comebacks.

“You like her,” she comments, not as a question, and not surprised. The both of them have a similar sense of justice even if their approaches are completely different. They both hate bullies with fearful intensity.

“Yes, but don’t tell her. I’m sure she will take offense.”

Claire grabs his shirt and pulls him to her, kisses him with lips, with tongue and with teeth until their breathing is erratic and they are on the verge of public scandal.

“Do you want to come upstairs?”

“God, yes.”

Her dress is abandoned on the floor as soon as they close the apartment door after them, and Matt’s shirt follows soon after. She has almost forgotten how good he looks shirtless. The lack of shoes and socks, messy hair and almost shy smile sum up to a combination that really, _really_ works for her.

“You heartrate is picking up,” he observes sounding a little surprised.

“Yeah, well. What are you going to do about that?”

She sounds confident but as soon as Matt’s hands lands on her hips, she knows she has made a serious miscalculation. His fingers spread over her skin, moving slowly, with just the right amount of pressure as he goes along. He drags his lips barely over her shoulder, her clavicle, her throat, raising goosebumps all over her. He sinks his nose in the hair behind her ear and inhales deeply, his chest bumping lightly with hers in result. He insinuates a jean-clad leg between her thighs.

“I think I can manage to raise it more.”

“I think that is an understatement.”

She kisses him, desperately, with hands roaming all over his toned chest, his bulk shoulders, the inconspicuous muscles of his back, but Matt doesn’t rush. They are still standing at the entrance of the bedroom and she is not sure they would make it to the bed if her self-restrain had anything to say on the matter.

Matt spins them with efficient accuracy and the next thing Claire knows is that she is almost seated on top of the chest of drawers where she keeps her sweaters and he is falling to his knees.

“You _really_ don’t have to.”

She is not being polite, she is already so, so aroused that is beginning to feel a little embarrassed about it. Claire is rapidly getting to the conclusion that Matt’s abilities are going to waste in the vigilante business because he is a goddamned gift from the gods at foreplay.

“We catholic boys spend a lot of time on our knees,” he says against the junction of her legs.

He makes her come with his tongue and his fingers twice before he dresses and kisses her sweetly on the cheek. ”I’m really looking forward a second date,” he flirts with a charming smile before heading out.

Claire doesn’t seems to be able to stop smiling for three days straight.

 

The calm comes to a sudden end when a crime organization tries to gain control of Manhattan again. There are at least ten simultaneous bank robberies with several hostages in each of them. The attackers are heavily armed with weaponry, explosives and chemicals that threaten to kill half the island if detonated at once and to go the extra mile, Trish turns out to be one of the people retained inside the Central Bank.

She hears the news on the radio and silently prays for a good outcome. There is no knock on her door, it just simply opens with a bang that makes it come out of their fringes. She jumps and picks up a pan before realizing that she knows damn well her intruders.

Luke is carrying Jessica to the couch, she is conscious but very,very pale so Claire works fast, putting on her globes and picking up her supplies before even seeing the amount of blood she is currently losing though a deep cut on her tight.

“I’m sorry for the door,” Luke says but he doesn’t look sorry at all. “Jessica has lost a lot of blood.”

“Pussy,” Jessica admonishes with a very weak voice but takes the hand he is offering, their eyes locking as Claire starts to work on the wound. She waits for the pang of jealousy or lost familiarity to hit her but it never comes. She has much to do at the moment anyway.

“Don’t be sorry”, Claire says with snark, “your business partner can pay for it later.”

She is still working on trying to stop the hemorrhage when Matt enters through the window in full Daredevil attire.

“How is she?” he asks worried.

“She is going to need a transfusion.”

“I’m O negative.” Matt says with gravitas.

Claire swears that the pathological avoidance of hospitals that these people have is going to stop surprising her any day soon.

“You should wear some armour clothes,” says Matt to Jessica. Claire can’t disagree but she is too busy stitching her up to join the conversation.

“I am not taking fashion advices from you, Redass.” Jessica groans and Claire makes a silent gesture for Luke to hold her leg still. “‘Devil wears Prada’ was definitely not about you.”

“All this bantering is really endearing but could you all let me focus on what I’am doing so Jessica doesn’t turn my couch red with blood?” 

Nobody answers because Claire has inherited from her mother a mean no-nonsense attitude that really comes up on a regular basis. You can take the girl out of Hell’s Kitchen but you can’t take Hell’s Kitchen out of the girl.

That night, she leaves her apartment without a functioning front door and spends the night at Matt’s. The neon light coming in from the windows is a punishment from God himself but  
she uses Matt’s body to shield herself from it. 

She can definitely think of worse ways to fall asleep.

 

Jessica gets better faster than she has any right to, but her blunt intervention in the latest New York’s potential disaster grants her an amount of media coverage than makes her even crankier than her usual self. They still manage to convince her to go out and celebrate the success of Karen and Trish first piece together under the promise that there will be enough alcohol.

The place is a little hole on the wall, dark and far from spotless, but there aren’t a lot of patrons and the cheeseburger is almost a piece of art so it suits them all just fine.

“Misty and I are going to open a PI business,” announces Colleen out of the blue. Her smile is uncontainable as Danny bumps her shoulder with his own in way of encouragement or celebration.

Misty stance is calmer, quiet almost,but she nods and smiles her trademark little mysterious smile and Claire takes a breath without realizing she had been holding it. “Nightwing Restorations,” Misty confirms.

“Thank God,” says Jessica after the round of congratulations, “I was fearing you would follow the trend and name it something stupidly alliterative like ‘Daughters of the Dragon’ or ‘Freedom Fighters’” 

“Isn’t there a band that is called ‘Freedom Fighters?”

“Gods, Danny, that’s ‘Foo Fighters’. How long have you been out of that mystic monastery?”

Claire takes, Misty’s hand and pats it affectionately when she looks at her. The rest of the table still bantering, bickering and laughing, mostly at Danny’s expense.

“I’m happy for you.”

“I don’t think the chance will arise,” says Misty looking meaningfully at Matt for a moment. “But call us if you need it, we will make you a discount,” and adds a wink for good measure.

Claire laughs. “It’s always good to have a friend’s discount.”

Misty smiles, broadly and sincere as her eyes wander slowly from Colleen to Danny, to Trish, to Jessica, to Luke and Karen, Matt and herself.

“No. It’s a family discount.”


End file.
